Understanding Diverse Pathways- Disciplinary Trajectories of Engi

We focus on the most popular disciplines of engineering: Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, and Industrial.. We focus on the large fields of mechanical, electrical, and computer en

Purdue University

Purdue e-Pubs

School of Engineering Education Faculty

6-14-2015

Understanding Diverse Pathways: Disciplinary

Trajectories of Engineering Students: Year 3- NSF

REE Grant 1129383

Susan M Lord

University of San Diego

Matthew Ohland

Purdue University

Richard Layton

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Follow this and additional works at:http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/enepubs

Part of theEngineering Education Commons

This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries Please contact epubs@purdue.edu for additional information.

Lord, Susan M.; Ohland, Matthew; and Layton, Richard, "Understanding Diverse Pathways: Disciplinary Trajectories of Engineering

Students: Year 3- NSF REE Grant 1129383" (2015) School of Engineering Education Faculty Publications Paper 24.

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/enepubs/24

Paper ID #11181

Understanding Diverse Pathways: Disciplinary Trajectories of Engineering

Students: Year 3- NSF REE Grant 1129383

Dr Susan M Lord, University of San Diego

Susan M Lord received a B.S from Cornell University and the M.S and Ph.D from Stanford University.

She is currently Professor and Chair of Electrical Engineering at the University of San Diego Her

teach-ing and research interests include electronics, optoelectronics, materials science, first year engineerteach-ing

courses, feminist and liberative pedagogies, engineering student persistence, and student autonomy Her

research has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Dr Lord is a fellow of the ASEE

and IEEE and is active in the engineering education community including serving as General Co-Chair

of the 2006 Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference, on the FIE Steering Committee, and as President of

the IEEE Education Society for 2009-2010 She is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on

Edu-cation She and her coauthors were awarded the 2011 Wickenden Award for the best paper in the Journal

of Engineering Education and the 2011 Best Paper Award for the IEEE Transactions on Education In

Spring 2012, Dr Lord spent a sabbatical at Southeast University in Nanjing, China teaching and doing

research.

Dr Matthew W Ohland, Purdue University

Matthew W Ohland is Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University He has degrees from

Swarthmore College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Florida His research on the

longitudinal study of engineering students, team assignment, peer evaluation, and active and collaborative

teaching methods has been supported by over $14.5 million from the National Science Foundation and

the Sloan Foundation and his team received Best Paper awards from the Journal of Engineering Education

in 2008 and 2011 and from the IEEE Transactions on Education in 2011 Dr Ohland is Chair of the IEEE

Curriculum and Pedagogy Committee and an ABET Program Evaluator for ASEE He was the 2002–2006

President of Tau Beta Pi and is a Fellow of the ASEE and IEEE.

Richard Layton, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Richard Layton is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of

Tech-nology He received a B.S from California State University, Northridge, and an M.S and Ph.D from the

University of Washington His areas of scholarship include student teaming, longitudinal studies of

engi-neering undergraduates, and data visualization His teaching practice includes formal cooperative learning

and integrating communications, ethics, and teaming across the curriculum He is a founding developer

of the CATME system, a free, web-based system that helps faculty assign students to teams, conduct

self-and peer-evaluations, self-and provide rater training He can occasionally be found playing guitar at a local

open mic.

c

Understanding Diverse Pathways: Disciplinary Trajectories of Engineering

Students Year 3—NSF REE Grant 1129383

Abstract

Engineering as a whole continues to suffer from a low participation of women of all races and

Black, Hispanic, and Native American men To diversify pathways for students to and through

engineering and to improve student success, we must first know how to measure success and

provide baseline data describing the current situation for all students Our previous work has

shown that persistence or success varies by race and gender, and how we measure persistence

matters in understanding this variation Once women matriculate in engineering, they graduate in

six-years at the same or better rates than their male counterparts of all races This finding,

however, shows considerable variation by engineering subdiscipline Aggregating all

engineering disciplines tends to produce a skewed view of the field given the large numbers of

students in Electrical and Mechanical engineering Disaggregation by race and gender is

imperative because not all populations respond the same way to similar conditions Building on

earlier findings that trajectories of engineering persistence are non-linear, gendered, and

racialized as a whole and for electrical and computer engineering, we are extending these

analyses to other engineering disciplines Using an existing dataset that includes whole

population data from eleven institutions throughout the U.S spanning more than 20 years, we

have an unprecedented opportunity to conduct analyses of student persistence disaggregated by

race, gender, and engineering discipline This gives us a unique opportunity to paint a more

complete picture of the current situation for students in engineering and to identify successes and

areas of concern Our research question is How do the trajectories of engineering students in

different engineering disciplines vary by race and gender? Trajectories are measured at

matriculation, four years later, and six-year graduation for matriculants to the disciplines as well

as all students in the major, including first-time-in-college (FTIC) and transfer students The

impact of first-year engineering (FYE) programs is also considered We focus on the most

popular disciplines of engineering: Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Mechanical, and Industrial In

addition, we have considered Aerospace Engineering given its similarity in curriculum to

Mechanical and Computer Engineering given its similar curriculum to Electrical We have begun

to work on comparisons of the five most popular engineering disciplines

Project goals

This project focuses on examining the research question “How do the trajectories of engineering

students in different engineering disciplines vary by both race and gender?” Trajectories are

measured at matriculation, four years later, and six-years later (i.e graduation) for matriculants

to the disciplines as well as all students in the major including first time in college (FTIC) and

transfers The impact of first year engineering (FYE) programs is also considered We focus on

the large fields of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering, that have few women and

the smaller fields of chemical, biomedical, and industrial engineering that attract more

women In the supplement approved in 2013, we extended this work to also include Civil

Engineering and Aerospace Engineering.—the former because feedback from the community

indicated that it was inappropriate to leave out one of the five most common disciplines, and the

latter because its enrollments and pathways are sufficiently interrelated with those of Mechanical

Engineering students that studying some outcomes require the consideration of both disciplines

Major activities

Since September 1, 2013, the project team has been productive working together well and

making progress on all planned tasks from the proposal We are publishing in other disciplinary

venues as we build on our success in being recognized for the best paper in the IEEE

Transactions on Education in 20111 for the first of our disciplinary studies and with the Betty

Vetter Award for Research from the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN) for

our “exceptional research committed to understanding the intersectionality of race and gender.”

The Chair of our External Evaluation Panel (EEP), Dr Bevlee Watford, is now at the National

Science Foundation (NSF) Dr Rebecca Brent has now become the chair The team met with

Dr Brent at ASEE in June 2014

Work during this third year focused on producing journal papers in the various disciplines We

had journal papers accepted on Mechanical Engineering,2 Chemical Engineering,3 Electrical and

Computer Engineering,4 and Civil Engineering.5 At ASEE 2014, we presented a poster (with

paper in proceedings) on the overall project,6 a paper considering the exchange of students

between Mechanical and Aerospace,7 and an interactive panel on Electrical and Computer

Engineering.8 We presented a paper at Frontiers in Education (FIE) in 2014 comparing all

disciplines.9

Mechanical Engineering (ME)

A paper on ME appeared in 2014 in the International Journal of Mechanical Engineering

Education A conference paper focused on the exchange of students between Aerospace and

Mechanical Engineering was not initially planned but provided useful insights for our analyses

This was presented at ASEE in 2014 Another paper focused on Mechanical Engineering and

Electrical Engineering, the two largest disciplines, was presented at FIE in 2013

Chemical Engineering (ChE)

A paper on ChE appeared in the Fall 2014 issue of Chemical Engineering Education This

focused on quantitative measures similar to the other disciplinary papers An additional paper

which combines quantitative and qualitative data to examine pockets of success for White and

Black women in ChE is in progress

Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Engineering (CpE)

A paper on EE and CpE was accepted and became available on August 21, 2014 via Early

Access in the IEEE Transactions on Education This extends our work published in 2011 to

include a more diverse set of matriculation pathways—students of first year engineering (FYE)

programs and transfer students A panel on student outcomes and demographics in Electrical

and Computer Engineering was presented to the ASEE ECE Division in June 2014

Civil Engineering

A manuscript has been accepted to appear in the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering

Education and Practice focusing on Civil Engineering The Civil/Environmental and

Environmental populations are not only much smaller (at least an order of magnitude) than the

Civil Engineering population in national ASEE data and MIDFIELD, but they each have a

similar demographic composition For simplicity, therefore, we restricted our work to Civil

Bioengineering

In working on the Bioengineering/Biomedical Engineering paper, we sought out a collaborator

with specific knowledge of the discipline This gives the work credibility in that community

and, more importantly, it helps us interpret the results in the context of the discipline We

consulted with Dr Naomi Chesler, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Biomedical

Engineering (BME) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has done research on gender

diversity in BME as well as mentoring She emphasized the importance of distinguishing

between Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering, particularly in that our data spans the time

period that marks the emergence of BME as a separate entity In light of this advice, we

investigated how MIDFIELD data compares with the ASEE national data

ASEE data from 2013 shows that Biomedical Engineering has more than six times the students

that Bioengineering (which also includes Agricultural Engineering) has In contrast, the

MIDFIELD data has about three times as many Bioengineering majors as Biomedical

Engineering majors Thus we do not have sufficient data to speak to the current situation in

Bioengineering/Biomedical Engineering Our analyses would tell us only about the past and not

be representative of the future We have decided not to pursue a paper on this field as part of the

scope of this project

Significant results

From ASEE 14 Paper “Student Demographics and Outcomes in Mechanical and Aerospace

Engineering Including Migration between the Disciplines”

There is a large amount of overlap in Mechanical (ME) and Aerospace Engineering (AsE)

curricula, and yet the student populations look quite different in terms of race and gender

representation This study includes institutional data from 6 institutions, all of which offered ME

and AsE over the period 1987-2010 This large sample (over 20,000 first-time-in-college

engineering students) allows us to adopt an intersectional framework to study race and gender

together In this paper, we examine the demographics of students in ME and AsE and their

six-year graduation rates Then we consider the exchange of students between these two similar

disciplines and how that affects the graduation rate of each

Overall, ME does not recruit many women, but it retains many to graduation AsE, however, has

recruitment and retention patterns that highlight the intersectionality of race and gender For

example, being a Hispanic female in AsE is more complex than just the superposition of being a

Hispanic student in AsE and being a female in AsE Within each racial/ethnic group, men who

start in engineering choose AsE and ME at higher rates than women who start in engineering In

Aero, the gender gaps are small to moderate among White, Hispanic, and Asian students, with a

larger gap between Black men and women choosing AsE (9% vs 4%) Mechanical Engineering

on the other hand, has large gender gaps within all racial/ethnic groups with more men than

women choosing ME

Many students switch from AsE to ME and vice versa By studying the differences between AsE

and ME and the exchange between them, both disciplines can learn from each other about how to

improve their recruiting and retention of underrepresented groups

From paper in Chemical Engineering Education “A Multi-institution Study of Student

Demographics and Outcomes in Chemical Engineering”

Using a large multi-institutional dataset, we describe demographics and outcomes for students

starting in and transferring into Chemical Engineering (ChE) In this dataset, men outnumber

women in ChE except among Black students While ChE starters graduate in ChE at rates

comparable to or above their racial/ethnic population average for engineering, women choose

and graduate in ChE at similar or higher rates than men of the same race/ethnicity Trajectories

of ChE students differ by race/ethnicity, but gender differences are small compared with the

differences by race/ethnicity and the gender differences observed for engineering as a whole and

in other engineering disciplines

From paper in IEEE Transactions on Education “Multi-institution Study of Student

Demographics and Outcomes in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the USA”

Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Engineering (CpE) have similar curricula, but

different demographics and student outcomes This work extends earlier longitudinal studies to a

larger and more diverse dataset with 90,000 first-time-in-college and 26,000 transfer students

who majored in engineering at USA institutions, including students who started in first-year

engineering programs, those switching majors, and those transferring from other institutions

Black men and women and Asian men in engineering are strongly attracted to EE when they start

in college Black students and Asian and Hispanic men are attracted to CpE more than other

engineering disciplines, but at lower rates than EE Asian students have the highest graduation

rates in EE EE students are much more likely to graduate than CpE students Compared to other

engineering disciplines, CpE graduation rates are low for women of all races/ethnicities and

Black men Both EE and CpE lose many starters but switchers and transfers compensate for

some of the loss Considering Asian students and White men, switching to EE accounts for the

high attrition rate from CpE, but attrition in other populations cannot be explained so easily

Trajectories of student enrollment differ by race/ethnicity The approach used in this work could

serve a model for others studying their own demographic distributions

From paper to appear in Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice

“Student Demographics and Outcomes in Civil Engineering in the U.S.”

Using a dataset from universities in the U.S that includes over 17,000 Civil Engineering (CE)

students, this work describes the demographics and outcomes for students starting in, switching

into, and transferring into CE to inform the decision making of faculty, department heads, and

deans Pathways in CE vary by race but not gender Although women generally outpersist men in

CE, the difference is small While Asian and Hispanic Men choose CE at lower rates than others,

the Asian and Hispanic men who do major in CE have higher graduation rates than expected

Black students of both genders are underrepresented in choosing CE and in completing the

degree Among Asian, Hispanic, and White students, those who start in CE and leave are

replaced by those who transfer or switch in, but Black students entering CE later do not make up

for the large losses of Blacks who start in CE The work suggests a range of qualitative questions

to better understand CE students

Dissemination

Results have been presented at key engineering education conferences such as Frontiers in

Education (FIE) and the Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education

(ASEE) Manuscripts have appeared in the International Journal of Mechanical Engineering

Education,2 the IEEE Transactions on Education,4 and Chemical Engineering Education.3 A

manuscript is in press at the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and

Practice.5 These journals were chosen because they target the appropriate audiences of

Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Civil

A panel was presented to the ASEE Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Division at

ASEE 2014 in June to discuss our data and results with stakeholders in the ECE community,

particularly faculty and administrators.8

A presentation in the ASEE Mechanical Engineering Division at ASEE 2014 in June allowed us

to discuss our data and results with stakeholders in the ME and Aero communities, particularly

faculty and administrators 2

Future Work

Journal Papers

Several journal manuscripts are in preparation and expect to be completed during the next year

1-As this work evolved, we decided to split the Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace

Engineering analyses into two papers Work of such detailed nature on these topics is not

familiar to these communities, so we wanted to be sure that the presentation was appropriate for

the audience Thus we did one paper focused on ME and another one focused on Aero To

determine an appropriate venue for this work, we contacted the Editor-in-Chief of the AIAA

Journal of Aerospace Information Systems (JAIS) The Editor-in-Chief was excited about our

work Dr Marisa Orr, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Louisiana Tech led this

paper Nichole Ramirez, currently an Engineering Education PhD student at Purdue, who has an

undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering also joined the team for this paper The paper

was accepted in January 2015 subject to minor revisions

2-Work has begun on a manuscript focusing on Industrial Engineering Dr Mary Pilotte,

Professor of Practice in Engineering Education at Purdue, with significant industry experience in

Industrial Engineering is leading this effort Target venues: Institute for Industrial Engineers

(IIE) Transactions, Institute for Industrial Engineering (IIE) Industrial Engineer, or the Journal

of Engineering Education

3- Work is underway on another manuscript that combines quantitative and qualitative analyses

of students in Chemical Engineering Because many themes which emerged may be of interest

beyond Chemical Engineering, we plan to submit this to the International Journal of

Engineering Education

4- Work has begun on an overview paper comparing many engineering disciplines The target

venue for this is the Journal of Engineering Education Our conference paper presented at FIE

2014 is a preliminary step in this progress.9 This gave us an opportunity to explore data displays

and identify most interesting results Based on the emergence of multi-disciplinary stories

related to access, pathways, and persistence, it seems likely that this work will need to be

published in multiple papers

Conference Presentations

To reach key stakeholders who teach subdisciplines of engineering, we have had our proposals to

present panels sessions at ASEE 15 accepted for Chemical Engineering, Mechanical

Publications Related to this Grant

Journal Publications

1 Ohland, M W., S M Lord, and R A Layton, “Student Demographics and Outcomes in

Civil Engineering in the U.S.,” Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and

Practice, accepted January 2015, in press

2 Lord, S M., R A Layton, and M W Ohland, “Multi-institution Study of Student

Demographics and Outcomes in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the U.S.A.,” IEEE

Transactions on Education, Available in Early Access as of Aug 21, 2014, DOI:

10.1109/TE.2014.2344622

3 Lord, S M., R A Layton, M W Ohland, C E Brawner, and R A Long, “A

Multi-institution Study of Student Demographics and Outcomes in Chemical Engineering,”

Chemical Engineering Education, 48(4), 223-230 (2014)

4 Orr, M K., S M Lord, R A Layton, and M W Ohland, “Student Demographics and

Outcomes in Mechanical Engineering in the U.S.,” International Journal of Mechanical

Engineering Education, 42(1), 48-60 (2014)

5 Camacho, M M and S M Lord, “Latinos and the Exclusionary Space of Engineering

Education,” Latino Studies, 11(1), 103-112 (2013)

6 Brawner, C E., M M Camacho, S M Lord, R A Long, and M W Ohland, “Women in

Industrial Engineering: Stereotypes, Persistence, and Perspectives,” Journal of Engineering

Education, 101(2), 288-318 (2012)

7 Camacho, M M and S M Lord, “Quebrando Fronteras: Trends among Latino and Latina

Undergraduate Engineers,” Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 10(2), 134-146 (2011)

8 Lord, S M., R A Layton, and M W Ohland, “Trajectories of Electrical Engineering and

Computer Engineering Students by Race and Gender,” IEEE Transactions on Education,

54(4), November 2011, pp 610-618 [received the IEEE Education Society Best Paper award

as the best paper published in the journal in 2011]

9 Ohland, M W., C E Brawner, M M Camacho, R A Layton, R A Long, S M Lord, and

M H Wasburn “Race, Gender, and Measures of Success in Engineering Education,”

Journal of Engineering Education, 100(2), 225-252 (2011) [Received the William Elgin

Wickenden Award recognizing the best paper published in the journal in 2011, selected to be

10 Lord, S M., M M Camacho, R A Layton, R A Long, M W Ohland, and M H Wasburn

“Who’s persisting in engineering? A comparative analysis of female and male Asian, Black,

Hispanic, Native American and White students,” Journal of Women and Minorities in

Science and Engineering, 15(2), 167-190 (2009)

Conference Presentations with Proceedings (Peer reviewed)

1 Lord, S M., M W Ohland, and R A Layton, “A Disciplinary Comparison of Trajectories

of U.S.A Engineering Students,” Proceedings of the 2014 Frontiers in Education

Conference, Madrid, Spain, October 2014

2 Lord, S M., M W Ohland, and R A Layton, “Understanding Diverse Pathways:

Disciplinary Trajectories of Engineering Students,” Proceedings of the 2014 ASEE

Conference, Indianapolis, IN, June 2014 (Poster in NSF Grantees Session and Proceedings

Paper)

3 Orr, M K, S M Lord, M W Ohland, and R A Layton, “Student Demographics and

Outcomes in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering including Migration between the

Disciplines,” Proceedings of the 2014 ASEE Conference, Indianapolis, IN, June 2014

4 Lord, S M., M W Ohland, R A Layton, and M K Orr, “Student Demographics and

Outcomes in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering,” Proceedings of the 2013 Frontiers in

Education Conference, Oklahoma City, OK, October 2013

5 Ohland, M W., M K Orr, R A Long, R A Layton, and S M Lord, “Introducing

‘Stickiness’ as a Versatile Metric of Engineering Persistence,” Proceedings of the 2012

Frontiers in Education Conference, Seattle, WA, October 2012

6 Orr, M K, M W Ohland, R.A Long, C E Brawner, S M Lord, and R A Layton,

“Engineering Matriculation Paths: Outcomes of Direct Matriculation, First-Year

Engineering, and Post-General Education Models,” Proceedings of the 2012 Frontiers in

Education Conference, Seattle, WA, October 2012